Saturday, November 15, 2008

Cell Phone Dilemma

Living within our means has meant that we have had to give up some of the conveniences of life. There are just too many mouths to be fed and feet that need shoes to add these items into our budget. One of these items is a cell phone. Thankfully, we live close to our places of work and neither one of our jobs requires one. I laughed the other day when I heard on the radio that even people on welfare are provided a cell phone by the government.

At one point we joined onto my sister's cell phone plan and quickly discovered that the extra bill for convenience was somehow hard to meet. When that plan expired, we lived happily without one until last summer. With the grant money for our trip, we purchased two track phones from Kroger so that we could communicate with each other when apart and be able to call family back home. When those minutes expired, we let the phones go.

Recently I've had been pondering the purchase of another Kroger phone due to the fact that we were going out of town and leaving our children behind. I was blessed to discover that Kroger is having a promotion on their phones. $50 will buy a phone, charger, 500 anytime minutes. With this purchase I will be able receive a $20 Kroger gift card at the phone company's website.

So that's $20 in groceries, 500 minutes, no monthly additional monthly bill and no commitment for $50. Granted the phone does look like a kid's toy, but I'll proudly carry it for such a great deal.

5 comments:

Saralyn said...

Have you looked into Net10? That's what we use. You can get the phone and its charger plus 300 minutes for $30. Then you restock as needed for 10-cents per minute. As long as you reload within the alotted amount of time you keep your phone number. They're at net10.com.

Heather L. said...

Okay, so that's $30 for 500 minutes which works out to about 16.6 cents a minute. What if we wanted to add more minutes after the 500 was used up? Do you know how much that would cost.

I'm in the same boat you are. :)

shay said...

no cell phone....I think the planet just tilted a little.
You do have a point though about the cost to benifit ratio.
I admire that you've been able to exist without one! And I think that sounds like a very good deal. We don't get cell deals like that in Canada.

Monica said...

Heather, with this deal it works out to be 6 cents a minute.

You can register online to their website to add minutes in $20 intervals, I think. After you use the first 500 minutes at a reduced rate you get 25 cents per minute or you can pay $4.99 to get a $.10/ min. rate.

Lisa said...

Thanks so much for this post. We have been looking at every item on our budget and cell phones are a big expense. We will definitely be looking into this deal.